On the importance of eyebrows (now with photo!)

While we were in Bosnia, Gina started cutting my hair--for consistency's sake, and to conserve money. She's been getting really good at it, too. No bad experiences, really, save for the time I got a reverse mohawk. She accidently adjusted the clipper two notches shorter instead of longer when moving from the sides to the top. I was left with a racing stripe up the center of my scalp. But we solved it by shaving it all off. I looked like a skinhead for a couple of weeks, but at least I had eyebrows.

I (used to) have bushy eyebrows, so Gina trims them every month or so. It looks better that way. If you have bushy eyebrows, you understand this. If not, take my word for it. So yesterday she gave me a haircut, and then went to do my eyebrows.

"What setting do we use for your eyebrows?" she asked.

"Two," I answered off-handedly.

Bzzzzz. "No, I don't think it's a two," she said. Then she started laughing and crying at the same time.

I dashed alarmedly to the bathroom mirror and looked. The top-right half of my right eyebrow was mostly gone. I cried more than I laughed. Gina was apologizing, but also reminding me that I was the one that said it was a two.

So I decided that eyebrows were just too important to leave to someone else. I would take responsibility for them myself. Just like shaving every day, a semi-monthly eyebrow trim would be added to my ritual of body-hair maintenance. I took the clippers, positioned myself carefully in the mirror, and painstakingly shaved off the entire left side of my left eyebrow.

"Aaaaarrrggghhhh!!!"

As horrified as I was, Gina was actually quite pleased. The damage she had done to my right eyebrow was nothing compared do the utter annihalation I had wreaked on my left one. We spent the rest of the day discussing alternative treatments: shaving both of them clear off, filling in the missing spaces with an eyebrow pencil, visiting a beautician for some professional advice. In the end, we decided to do nothing.

And as the icing on the cake, today I was contacted for a job interview with a tech recruiter. Perfect timing. I decided that the best course of action was to pretend that nothing was unusual or out-of-the-ordinary about my appearance. So I went. And when she was asking me questions from across the table, I couldn't be sure if she was looking me in the eye... or looking me in the eyebrow. If I don't get the job, at least I have an excuse. Eyebrows are important.